WHEN IT COMES TO the World Cup, the greatest show in soccer, it can be hard to figure out where to start. It's a 32-team, 12-stadium, multibillion-euro production that takes five weeks every four years. Large swaths of the world stand still to follow it.

And, of course, there are a million ways to look at it. For the hard core, it's an opportunity to watch 64 games in five weeks and not have anyone judge you. For the politically minded, it's a unique window into a country that completely mobilizes to host a soccer tournament. And for the bandwagon fans, it's a chance to get caught up in the excitement and heartbreak of entire nations watching television at the same time.

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Illustration by James Taylor for The Wall Street Journal

So here's your guide to navigating this World Cup summer—because, whether you like it or not, the tournament will crop up in more conversations than you might expect.

The Lowdown

The road to the World Cup started over two years ago with more than 200 teams. Everyone got to play, even teams like American Samoa and the Maldives. Through a painfully long qualifying process, divided up by region, that initial pool whittled itself down to the group of 32 that will be in Brazil.

Every team at the World Cup had to go through some version of it—except, of course, Brazil, which qualified automatically as the host nation. (By a quirk of the rules, Spain only played eight games to punch its ticket. Uruguay, meanwhile, played 18.)

Last December, the 32 nations were seeded and drawn into eight four-team groups. Each of those will unfold as a round robin or all-play-all contest, meaning that every nation is guaranteed three games. The top two teams from each group will advance to the round of 16. From there, the tournament works under a straight knockout format: Winner advances, loser goes home. One game, potentially decided in 30 minutes of extra time or in a penalty shootout. (This is when the global fingernail-biting habit starts to spike.)

It all culminates on July 13, after five weeks and 64 games, with the final at the Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro.

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Pele in the World Cup final between Sweden and Brazil
Rex Features

The Maracanazo

The last time Brazil hosted the World Cup, in 1950, the country's glorious soccer history hadn't been written yet. The five championships all came later. So did the famous yellow-and-green jerseys. So did Pelé. But the 1950 tournament was supposed to be the first chapter, written during the final game, inside the Maracanã, the 200,000-seat arena in Rio de Janeiro purpose-built for the World Cup. Instead, it turned into the team's darkest day.

Because of the World Cup's format in those days, technically there wasn't a final, just a final game at the end of a second group stage. It meant that Brazil, having steamrolled through opponents, needed only a draw against Uruguay to lift the trophy for the first time. Uruguay needed to win outright.

Wearing white shirts and white shorts with blue trim, Brazil opened the scoring in the 47th minute through the winger Friaça. The party lasted just 19 minutes. Uruguay's Alcides Ghiggia set up Juan Schiaffino for the tying goal. At 1-1, Brazil was still on track to win the World Cup. Ghiggia had other ideas. In the 79th minute, he blazed down the right wing, cut inside and shaped to cross the ball before a split-second change of heart. Instead, he drilled a low shot to the near post, the spot a goalkeeper should always have covered.

‘You know from the beginning that it's going to happen, but you still try to avoid it.’

In Brazil, the surviving footage of the goal is "like Zapruder's film of Kennedy getting shot," goalkeeper Moacir Barbosa's biographer Roberto Muylaert says. "There's only one film. You know from the beginning that it's going to happen, but you still try to avoid it."

Minutes later, Uruguay was the world champion. Barbosa was the scapegoat. Brazil did everything it could to erase the memory of that day—the disastrous Maracanazo, as they called it. They even abandoned their white jerseys. When Brazil finally claimed its birthright eight years later at the 1958 World Cup, led by a 17-year-old Pelé, the team wore blue. And on all four occasions they've won soccer's greatest prize since then, the Brazilians did it, unmistakably, in yellow.

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Luke Wilkshire of the Socceroos during the Australia v Oman World Cup qualifier match in Sydney in March
Rex Features

The Day You Should Call in Sick

The World Cup crams in 48 games over the first 15 days in an orgy of group-stage soccer. But assuming you can't take two weeks off work to watch 72 hours of television, here's one day you should definitely call in sick: June 18.

The triple-header offering for that Wednesday, which features teams from four continents, kicks off with Australia playing the 2010 runner-up, the Netherlands. From there, go straight into Spain vs. Chile, the defending champion against one of the most exciting teams in South America. And finally, unwind with the kind of game that you might never watch any other time, but that could easily produce six goals: Cameroon vs. Croatia. All in a day's worth of group-stage action.

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Brazil's Fred celebrates during a match against England at Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro on Monday.
Fex Features

The First-Timers

Bosnia-Herzegovina are the new kids on the block in Brazil. The country, part of the former Yugoslavia, has only played FIFA-recognized international games since 1995. The Dragons screamed through qualifying, but as World Cup first-timers, the odds are against them.

Of the 22 debutantes over the past five tournaments, only seven have survived the group stage. Between them, those 22 had 23 victories, eight draws and 47 defeats. There are a few happy exceptions, newbies who made Cinderella runs. Take Croatia, who earned a surprising third place in 1998. Or Senegal, who beat France in the 2002 group stage, and rode that momentum to the quarters.

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Aerial view of the Arena da Amazonia stadium in Manaus, Brazil, in March
Associated Press

The Jungle Stadium

More than half the surface of Brazil is covered by rain forest. So it's only fitting that the World Cup should have a stadium smack in the middle of it, right? Meet the 42,000-seat Arena da Amazônia in Manaus, perhaps the most confusing stadium at the tournament.

Designed to look like a straw basket, a specialty of the region, it sits some 2,700 kilometers northwest of Rio. Workers had to scramble to finish it, lest the site be flooded during the rainy season. It will be hot—around 32°C. It will also be humid—often around 100%. And for those reasons, there are 24 teams who are very grateful to avoid it.

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FIFA Football World Cup Trophy in 2010
Rex Features

The Cup

The World Cup hasn't always been this World Cup. For the first nine editions of the tournament, from 1930 to 1970, the winner was awarded what came to be known as the Jules Rimet trophy (in honor of the FIFA president who first proposed the tournament). As FIFA describes it, it was "a depiction of the goddess of victory holding an octagonal vessel above her, produced in gold with a base of semiprecious stones."

That trophy was retired in 1970 after Brazil won its third World Cup. The reward was getting to keep it. The cup's replacement was a garish 36.5-centimeter sculpture of 18-karat gold, designed by Italian artist Silvio Gazzaniga, that came into circulation with the 1974 tournament.

The Jules Rimet trophy disappeared in Brazil in 1983 and is believed to have been melted down. To prevent that from happening again, today's winners spend little time with their prize. As the full-time property of FIFA, it's used for celebrations. But the actual hardware the winning teams take home is one of several gold-plated replicas, which are technically called the FIFA World Cup Winners' Trophies. Doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

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Frank Lampard In despair after his shot off the crossbar bounced at least a foot inside the goal and was ruled out during a World Cup match between England and Germany in 2010
Rex Features

The Worst Calls of All Time

Figuring out the World Cup's worst decisions depends on who you ask. (We're talking about decisions by referees here, so the U.S. national team's denim-design jerseys in 1994 don't count.)

But two calls in the pantheon of dubious decisions both revolve around England. In 1966, the team benefited from one by a linesman from Azerbaijan on its way to winning the final. Tofiq Bahramov deemed that a Geoff Hurst shot against West Germany had crossed the goal line. Replays show it wasn't so clear. Germans are still upset about it.

Things evened out four years ago. Frank Lampard's shot off the crossbar against Germany bounced at least a foot inside the goal—and was ruled out. England went on to lose that game 4-1.

At least those officiating blunders will be a thing of the past this time around. FIFA has adopted goal-line technology that tells the referee definitively whether the ball was in. Now all the referees have to worry about is diving, deliberate handballs, cynical tackling, jersey-pulling, elbowing and did we mention diving?

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The mascot of the French World Cup
AFP/Getty Images (lion); Camilla Wisbauer/istockphoto (tent); Moviestore/Rex Features (Lone Ranger)

The Mascots

When you think Brazil and you think soccer, you naturally think three-banded armadillos, right? Meet Fuleco the three-banded armadillo and 2014 World Cup mascot. He has the unique ability to roll himself up into a soccer ball and fits squarely in the tournament's tradition of cartoon animals—like South Africa's Zakumi, the leopard with unnatural green hair from 2010; Footix, the blue cockerel from France 1998; or Goleo, the pantsless lion from Germany 2006.

Despite the occasional, unintentional nudity, they're not the edgiest of choices. But at least they're a little more creative than the 1970s trend of just making the mascots dressed-up children (like Mexico's Juanito or Argentina's Gauchito). And they're certainly less frightening than the demented aliens Ato, Kaz and Nik from the Japan/South Korea tournament in 2002.

Still, can anyone ever match the genius of Spain's 1982 mascot? Mexico's '86 jalapeño pepper in a sombrero comes pretty close. But Spain's jolly anthropomorphic orange wore a Spanish soccer kit and had foliage to suggest his hair. His name was Naranjito.

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